The turtle lives ‘twixt plated decks,
Which practically conceal its sex.
I think it clever of the turtle
In such a fix to be so fertile.

                                             – Ogden Nash

The Torah tells us that the Jewish nation came down to Egypt as a nomadic clan numbering but a scant seventy souls.  When they left Egypt, however, only several generations later, their number had increased to  603,550 males over the age of twenty – not counting, in other words, the women and children.

So just do the math, and you will see that those Israelites, even under frightfully trying conditions of Egyptian slavery – grueling physical, mental, and emotional servitude – had managed to be extremely prolific. How did they pull that off?

The Talmud tells us that the Israelite wives, perceiving the extreme urgency of  growing the Jewish nation, did everything in their power to be highly attractive and desirable to their husbands in the evenings, even after the long and arduous days that those men passed under the taskmaster’s whip.  Now, men will be men, thank God!  You can always count on that.  The result was that “… the Children of Israel swarmed fruitfully, multiplying mightily and superlatively, until the land [of Egypt] was full of them” (Exodus 1). Sextuplet births were not unusual, and perhaps even the norm; so tells us the Midrash (ancient commentary to the Torah).

But in these modern times, even under conditions far more conducive to producing and raising large Jewish families, our nation as a whole has not demonstrated anything resembling the fecundity that our forebears did under cruel Egyptian servility. What gives?

Hey, you Jewish ladies everywhere!  Are you listening? Please reread this article from the top. And if you need the location of your nearest Victoria’s Secret, that information is as close to your fingertips as your nearest Web browser and Google search.  The enormity of the mitzvah you will have by just entering your husband’s credit card number and pressing “Place Order” is well-nigh incalculable in terms of the future of our people!

Meanwhile, the importance of Jewish procreation has certainly not been lost on our entire contemporary Jewish population, many of whom are already regularly heeding the cry of God’s very first commandment of the Torah’s 613 commandments: “Be fruitful and multiply!” (Genesis 1).

Our earlier blogs have featured circumcisions more than once. We continue here in that grand tradition to acknowledge those Jewish families who take very seriously the need to assure the continuity of our Jewish nation. For insights and commentary on the Jewish rite of circumcision in general, please refer to those earlier blogs.

And to those couples whose valiant efforts produce baby girls, we tip our hats with no less admiration and ardor! For yet another Midrash has it that God brought about the redemption of the entire Jewish nation from Egypt in the merit of none other than the righteous Jewish women.

Perhaps the true way to a man’s heart is not through his stomach, after all.

Vive la femme!